[Momma's] Meet the Blackbellies!
Welcome to week 3 of our short "Meet the Momma's" series for spring babies at Penner Mini Farms!
Hiya, farm friends 👋🏼
We are wrapping up our Meet the Momma’s series, so here’s a quick recap on the last couple of weeks:
Week 1: Meet the LaManchas
Week 2: Meet the Nigerian Dwarfs
This week, we’re introducing you to our American Blackbelly Sheep (AKA the “Blackbellies”)!
What’s so great about American Blackbelly Sheep?
If you’re not very familiar with all the different breeds of sheep, these beauties may surprise you!
Here’s a quick run down of some of the MANY reasons Jeff and I are Blackbelly super fans 🤩:
American Blackbelly sheep are hair sheep, therefore they do not require shearing and docking of tails (less work and/or expense for us!)
American Blackbelly ewes are great mothers (AWESOME mothers! And they let me hang with their babies)
American Blackbelly Sheep are medium-sized sheep (typically between 70-100 lbs for ewes)
Blackbelly's are a great starter breed for new sheep farmers (very social, low maintenance and easy to care for!)
As I’m sure you’ll notice, these sheep are pretty much carbon copies of each other and have waaaaaay less coloring variations from the goats and cows.
But as their shepherds, we know each sheep’s face and even to some extent know their call (when they yell at us to feed them first at chore time!).
A quick background on our herd
We started with 3 ewes (Leilani, Ohana, Kai) and one ram (Makoa) for our starter herd and decided to give them Hawaiian names (because, why not!?).
Since then we’ve cycled through one breeding season, retained Ash, Aspen and Pua for breeding stock, and then picked up a new Ram from our friends at Devine Pickins Farm in Rose, OK (Hi, Holly!👋🏻).
Be sure to check out our Blackbelly page on our website if you want to learn more about them, but now it’s time to Meet the Momma’s!
(in order of oldest to youngest)
Meet Kai
DOB: 4/15/22 (twin)
Kai is the only dam raised girl of our original 3 (that just means her mom raised her instead of being a bottle baby), however she is actually our most loving ewe!
Whenever we’re in the pens every morning and night for chores and/or when we’re in there for a bit longer on our weekly Saturday morning cleaning pen day, Kai is always right next to us just looking up with her big eyes and quietly asking for some attention.
Who can say no to that face!!! 😍
Last Spring, she gave us little Ash (who you’ll meet a bit later) and we are expecting Kai to lamb anytime in April (hopefully twins!).
Meet Ohana “Hana”
DOB: 4/18/22 (twin)
Hana was a bottle baby and she is the crazy kook of our bunch!
If you look really closely, you can see her ear is split from an accident when she was a baby on her way to the vet, as she pulled out her own ear tag.
But I say, embrace your imperfections - she’s got the coolest ear at the farm!
Last spring Hana was the only momma who gave us a boy (we named him “Mesquite”…), and he has grown big & strong and he is the sweetest thing (…and that’s biting us in the butt now because his nickname is officially “Sweet Skeet”).
We are expecting her to be the first to lamb this Spring and we’re suspicious it might be triplets!
Meet Leilani “Lani”
DOB: 4/20/22 (quad)
Fun Fact: all 3 of these girls were born within 5 days of one another!
Lani was also a bottle baby and she started out being our biggest love bug!
However, we’ve found that when pregnancy kicks in, she tends to keep her distance quite a bit more, allowing Kai to take over the “most loving” sheep title.
She was a quad (yes, that means she was 1 of 4!) so we’re assuming she’ll be giving us multiples this time around as well.
Last Spring, Lani was the first to lamb and gave us precious Aspen who you’ll read about next!
We are expecting her to lamb in April and we’re hoping for twins (but it could be more, since she was a quad herself!)!
Meet Aspen
DOB: 4/3/23 (single)
Lani is Aspen’s momma, and Aspen was our first ever lamb born at the farm last spring and what a beauty she was (and still is!)!
Both Ash and Aspen were weaned naturally from their momma’s (since we retained them and had no real reason to wean ourselves) so they are both slightly larger than their dams (mommas), because they had access to their momma’s nourishing milk for 7-8 months (rather than just 3 months!).
Aspen was not pregnant for the 2024 season, so we are excited to get her first lambs in 2025.
Meet Ash
DOB: 5/10/23 (single)
Kai is Ash’s momma, and she gave us just one single beautiful girl last Spring.
Ash has grown into a gorgeous ewe, just like her momma!!
Her and Aspen have been pretty much inseparable since birth, so here’s an updated 📷 of the girls from last month.
Ash has been confirmed pregnant, but we’re assuming she’ll be lambing after the other momma’s so that might be around May.
Not to continue to beat the same drum here, but this is all really cool! I love it! What a great idea! Best part: I can tell that you guys truly love God's animals and are taking great care of them. They are blessed! My favorite "blackbelly" is by far "Ash" as a baby lamb. Man, they grow up so fast...
Hi, glad you're lambing is going well !! I couldn't imagine having quads lol , thankful tall of mine has only twinned so far .. we ended up with 11 babies this round. I'll be sending y'all some pictures soon .
Also I truly do love reading these news letters ❣️